Case Studies
Six campaigns, from strategy through execution. Each one started by finding the story above the one the brand was already telling.
Target ALS · “Becca” streaming concert
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Target ALS had built a brand among people already touched by the disease. The next job was new audiences: grow the supporter base and open a new revenue channel for research.
When Broadway icon Rebecca Luker died of ALS, I saw an audience match: Broadway fans skew higher-income and cause-committed. I created “Becca,” a streaming concert with today's biggest stage stars that told Rebecca's story as anyone's story, because anyone can get ALS. I co-wrote it with Sarah Rebell, co-produced it with David Mahoney, directed it, and secured the foundational production funding through Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma America. Together with the Target ALS team, our production company and agency Crimson Park, we brought it to life.
I led a full campaign that drove ticket sales through paid digital, content sponsorships, influencers, social and PR. Tickets were $20 to maximize new-audience reach, with sponsors offsetting production costs. Three streams in one evening hit UK, East Coast and West Coast prime time, and free tickets for frontline workers gave people a second reason to share.
Raised in one night, applied immediately to research.
Target ALS · Brand build
Target ALS funded research almost entirely through grants and lab resources. It had no consumer brand, and its public platforms were built for scientists. The goal: build a consumer-facing brand and donor pipeline from scratch, competing with ALS groups that already had extensive public reach.
I built the brand from the ground up and designed a full-funnel marketing engine to move people from awareness to action, then led the teams that brought it to life, together with agency partners Crimson Park and Stack Insights. My content strategy translated the science of ALS into plain language, closing a long-standing gap between the research and patient communities.
Paid social and content ads promoted that education (think “What is a biomarker?”) and drove to a rebuilt, rebranded website, backed by SEO and audience retargeting. Partnerships and earned media extended the reach.
Site traffic growth, from under 500 visitors a year to more than 200,000.
Eating Recovery Center · Eating Recovery Day
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Eating Recovery Center (ERC), a national network of eating disorder treatment centers, needed to grow patient intake, fill capacity and build brand equity in markets where it was acquiring or opening locations.
The category's biggest barrier was a myth: that eating disorders only affect young, affluent white women. It was quietly suppressing demand. Together with the ERC team and PR strategist Mia Humphreys, we built the brand around the people the stereotype left out.
Building on my idea for an ambassador network, over a year we recruited a 50+ member network of former patients across ages, ethnicities, gender identities and body types, placing them as speakers, TV guests and bylined writers. A new annual “Eating Recovery Day” launched it, featuring clinical experts, recovered patients and Candace Cameron Bure, whom I secured and who opened up about her own eating disorder. A year-round content and news program followed. Competitors marketed treatment. We positioned ERC around what treatment is for: lasting recovery.
Lift in patient intake from people who submitted their information online. Several locations reached full capacity.
Nerium International · EHT for Brain Health
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Nerium International, a direct sales skincare company with tens of thousands of independent reps, acquired EHT, a brain health supplement developed at Princeton University. Supplements without FDA approval rarely earn media attention. The goal: build credibility in a new category fast, and give the sales force something exciting to sell.
Brain health was a niche story, told through concussions, CTE and pro football. I reframed it as everyone's story: the brain is an organ that wears down every day from poor sleep, alcohol, nutrient gaps and inactivity.
The hook was my idea: two Super Bowl champions, Sidney Rice and Steve Weatherford, publicly pledging to donate their brains to science, backed by leading neuroscientists. Football players know firsthand what's at stake for the brain, from hard hits to CTE, so the pledge grabbed attention and made the message credible. That gave EHT a reason to exist, and gave every rep a credible story to share. Brain health isn't about giving yours away. It's about taking care of it.
Together with the Nerium team, I led the rollout, from the reveal at Nerium's annual convention to the national media push.
Demand spiked so fast that orders were filled in phases while production caught up.
Johnson & Johnson · K-Y Brand Intimacy Experiment
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Valentine's Day is K-Y's top sales period, but the category's marketing was either explicit or invisible, and mainstream media rarely featured non-medical sexual health products. K-Y needed a credible way to drive Q1 sales by positioning the brand around the whole relationship, not just the bedroom.
I elevated K-Y from its functional benefits to a relationship expert, drawing on more than a century of brand trust to earn that authority. I created “The K-Y Brand Intimacy Experiment,” a research-backed e-book guiding couples through activities to strengthen their relationship, developed with sex therapist and best-selling author Dr. Ian Kerner and Columbia University's Dr. Hilda Hutcherson.
Together with the K-Y brand team, we launched it with couples documenting the experiment over several weeks, including ABC's “The Bachelorette” stars Trista and Ryan Sutter, plus 75 lifestyle bloggers, all timed to the Valentine's Day sales window.
K-Y Brand's top-performing Q1 sales quarter, timed to the Valentine's Day window.
Johnson & Johnson · Listerine 21-Day Challenge
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Listerine needed to change behavior: get people to make rinsing part of their daily oral care routine. The brand built a “21-Day Challenge” around the idea that it takes three weeks to form a habit, backed by print, TV and retail advertising and a $3-off coupon. The job was to turn that offer into action at the shelf.
I gave consumers a reason to take the challenge now. I brought in a cause tie-in with Oral Health America, benefiting children without access to dental care, that turned every social sign-up into a Listerine donation.
I also created “The $21,000 Swish,” kicked off by Ginnifer Goodwin swishing on the red carpet. Together with the Listerine brand and agency team, we used bloggers, a Twitter party and earned media to carry one call to action: take the challenge, redeem the coupon, rinse daily.
In incremental sales year over year. The campaign was credited with the primary call to action that drove sales and coupon redemption.
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